MOBILE, Alabama — When the 35th annual Air Race Classic, a national event for women pilots, ends at Mobile’s Brookley Field, a group of girls from the seven Boys & Girls Clubs of South Alabama will be there.

Inger Anderson, director of operations for the clubs, and Terry Carbonell, a Florida pilot who competes in the Air Race Classic, developed a program about a year ago to give the girls, ages 8 to 15, an intensive educational program about women in aviation, connected to the race. Under the Air Race Classic 2011 Youth Program title of “No Limits,” the program has given the girls many opportunities to explore aviation options open to them.

For example, in February 2011, all the girls were taken up in general aviation planes by members of the Young Eagles organization — an exciting adventure, though Cailen Rogers, a Pearl Haskew Elementary School student, pronounced her ride in the small plane “a little bumpy.”

View full sizeBee Falk Haydu, one of the original Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II, came to Mobile to speak to girls from seven Boys & Girls Clubs of South Alabama. (Courtesy of Gaby Gray)

The girls also heard an inspiring presentation by Bee Falk Haydu, a 90-year-old World War II pilot, who at age 87, competed in the 2007 Air Race Classic.

They also watched a movie, “Breaking through the Clouds,” about the women who took part in the first women’s air derby in 1929. And from that film and information they gathered, Tekeyah Parrish, an eighth-grader at Hankins Middle School, learned that the first pilots fixed their own mechanical problems “even if they had to land in the middle of a field.”

One of the main things she learned from studying about women in aviation, Parrish said, is that “Women did have a taste of independence,” that they were not, as some people thought in an earlier time, “just a pretty smile and an apron.” In March, the girls attended a career day that was held to explain opportunities in aviation.

In April, they attended an event at Camp Chandler-Tonsmeire. It was there that Delannie Rogers, who’ll attend Dunbar Magnet School in the fall, learned how to operate a remote-control plane, how to use a compass, how to read the weather and how to understand aircraft landing patterns.

Overall, the girls enjoyed all the activities they participated in through the “No Limits” program. “It was really, really good,” said Lizzie Graham. She was particularly fascinated with the single-engine planes, and as a budding artist, has spent hours drawing and coloring a picture of the plane she rode in with the Young Eagles.

On May 21, the girls were paired with the racers they will be cheering for in the Air Race Classic as the pilots make their way to Mobile. And on May 26, they designed and painted the T-shirts they’ll wear to the race.

The purpose of this “Adopt-a-Racer Pilot Program” is for the youth “to communicate with the racers, read their web sites and have the opportunity to talk to or e-mail the racers about aviation, flying the race, common interests or just life in general,” according to the outline of the program.

In a culminating event, an educational youth activity will be held at the USS Alabama Battleship and Air Museum on June 25. The 55 girls who took part in the program will receive a “goodie bag” with aviation information and other items to commemorate their participation in the project.

And they’ll have the opportunity to tour the battleship and museum with their adopted women pilots from the 2011 Air Race Classic.

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This story was written by Jo Anne McKnight, Press-Register correspondent.